The two disc come in Klanggalerie house style three panel mini gatefold. This takes in images of Petri dishes,  & monochrome line drawn artwork of freakish figures/ weird architecture courtesy of long-running Cryptic Corp(the projects management team) member Hommer Flynn. It’s pleasing & arty enough, though there is no information about the films, or the art installations that these three soundtracks come from.

Anyway let’s move onto the sounds with-in. And first up we have the soundtrack for 2007’s Strange Culture- which is documentary/narrative film, that told the story of modern artist Steve Kurtz, and the accusations of “bioterrorism” levelled against him in 2004. The film notable featured Tilda Swinton( who gets a large grainy picture of herself on one of the releases inner panels), and received somewhat mixed reviews. The Residents soundtrack take in six fairly short cues- which fall between 41 seconds & nearing four & a half minutes.  These move from effectively chilling main theme, which is built around this swimming yet angular melody- this oddly reminded me of some of the unsettling/ stripped back moments on Goldsmith’s soundtrack for the original Alien film. Onto simmering & pelting elector vibe meets darting gamelan sound-scaping. All in all it’s short, but pleasant enough soundtrack- with the main theme been a real keeper.

The second soundtrack on the first disc is for 2006’s Haeckel's Tale, though it was actually not used in the final film. Haeckel's Tale was one of the episodes from US horror anthology series Masters of Horror. Each hour long episode in the series found a known horror director doing their own one off short film. And for this episode the director was John McNaughton- who is most known for his film Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer. The film was an adaptation from a Clive Barker Story, which was based in the 19th century. It told of cocky/ young medical student Ernst Haeckel, a necromancer, and Haeckels’ resurrected wife.  I’ve seen a few of the Masters of Horror episodes, but not this one- so I can’t really comment on what the used music was like. But really as a bit of sound-tracking for a horror movie, this isn’t half bad. It has a few of the off-kilter Resident touches, but mostly it’s a fairly focused & formal scoring blending of moody synth-strings, haunting vocal simmers(courtesy of long-time Rez collaborator Carla Fabrizio), and darker ambient dips. The soundtrack takes in eight tracks, with each having a running time between one & nine minutes. All in all it’s certainly interesting to hear The Resident’s giving a go at more standard soundtrack work, and on the whole it’s worthy…I’ll now have to try & hunt down the film, and hear what was used instead.

The second disc is completely taken up with the soundtrack for The River Of Hades- a galley installation that never happened. The origins of the piece come from when The Residents were planning to release a series of Resident toy figures,designed by subversive & often garishly psychedelic US artists Steve Cerio. Neither the figures, or the installation ever happened, so this soundtrack is all that is left from the project.
The soundtrack takes five tracks, and these have a running time between three & thirteen minutes- with a total running time of forty five minutes. The idea of the installation was to play of series of seemingly random music (in 5.1 surround audio) from 12 separate speakers- so as you can imagine  the music here is quite lose, manic, shifting and (at-times) working against it self. Each track has a very free/ jam type feel, with percussive elements starting then stopping. It finds drifts & waves of  gamelan moving together, through to plodding yet brooding synth sways. Moving onto sawing & seared electro texturing over ethno percussive backdrops.  Through to big beat electronica blended with chugging guitar workings, through to taut soundtrack dwells, and beyond. At times some of the melodies that appear bring make memories of The Resident’s past work- whether this is deliberate, or just coincidence I’m not sure. Anyway as I whole I’d say this soundtrack is the most experimental/ Resident’s like of the three soundtracks here, it’s also very lose & jam like too…so really you’ve got to like The Residents at the least controlled, and in a purely instrumental setting. For me I find mostly it’s a splendid bit of sonic ‘n’ shifting chaos from the project, and I think it would have perfectly fitted the subversive edges of Mr Cerio work.

So in conclusion- this double disc set offers up three fairly different sounding soundtracks. And if you enjoyed the more instrumental side of The Resident’s sound in recent years, this is certainly worth a look.